


Fight or Flight, and I Flew

by crossingwinter



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Beta Pairing: Sam/Gilly, F/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Warnings: discussions of/memories of past rape and sexual abuse of a canon compliant variety, and then linear, because i'm decisive like that, rating for themes more than activities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-09-03 10:47:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8709430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: Maybe she’s imagining hearing Jon’s voice in the night. She probably can’t hear anything over the wind roaring in her ears as she makes her way through the city towards the bus that will take her down to Hyde Park. She feels her phone buzzing in her purse, but she doesn’t want to untuck her hands from her sleeves long enough to put on her gloves so she lets it be.She’ll look on the bus. She’ll have to—she needs to let Missandei know she’s coming.





	

 Dany gets up from the table, and she sees Gilly’s eyes widen in pained confusion.

“Dany?” Jon calls after her, but she’s tugged her coat off the back of her chair and is already pushing her way through the crowded restaurant. It’s oddly quiet. People are talking but she can’t hear anything over the buzzing in her ears, the sound of her own breath, the thumping of her heart so loudly and violently alive in her chest.

She shrugs into her coat as the icy wind hits her full in the face, and it’s the cold that tells her where she’s going.

 _South_ , is all she thinks and she turns around the corner that will take her that way. _South_ , because south is safe and he won’t look for her south and right now she can’t stand the sight of him.

-

_dtarg: i haven’t told him about it yet._

_missingday: you should. i mean it’s none of my business who you tell about what happened to you, but you like to talk shit out and if you want it to work…_

_dtarg: i know. i know._

_dtarg: i’m scared though._

_missingday: of course you are. and it’s more than fair._

_-_

_She doesn’t know if he’s noticed the stretch marks on her stomach. They’re so pale, but against her already pale skin they are missable.  She’s sure he won’t have noticed other signs—that the diva cup she wears is the one for women who’ve given birth, the scar tissue that she can feel but she’s not sure anyone else can, from where her son had ripped the skin of her vulva on his way out._

_He doesn’t know about Drogo._

_He knows about Daario _—_ that’s easier.  She’d thought she wanted Daario, and a girl’s confusion is easier to explain than a brother selling her outright._

_She doesn’t know how to tell him and it frightens her._

-

_Dany first meets Gilly on an unseasonably cold day in June. It’s the first time that Dany has gone to group therapy. She’s not convinced it’s for her, but her therapist told her to give it a try._

_Dany’s the new face in the room where three other women sit. She’s not the youngest—which makes her stomach twist—and Gilly’s got a little blue eyed boy playing with a set of blocks in the corner._

_-_

Maybe she’s imagining hearing Jon’s voice in the night. She probably can’t hear anything over the wind roaring in her ears as she makes her way through the city towards the bus that will take her down to Hyde Park. She feels her phone buzzing in her purse, but she doesn’t want to untuck her hands from her sleeves long enough to put on her gloves so she lets it be.

She’ll look on the bus. She’ll have to—she needs to let Missandei know she’s coming.

-

_She doesn’t know if Gilly’s a nickname, or even a fake name. Gilly for Gillian, maybe, or maybe her name is just Gilly. Dany doesn’t know. Dany doesn’t ask. It doesn’t matter._

_It takes a month of weekly sessions before Dany convinces herself to talk to Gilly on her way back to the train. Gilly doesn’t always bring her son. It’s plain that she doesn’t like talking about it around him. He’s getting old enough to understand bad things, and she doesn’t want him to know._

_Dany wouldn’t either._

_Rhaego would be fifteen._

_They didn’t even let her hold him._

_-_

_dtarg: my skin is crawling_

_missingday: that’s normal in your line of work_

_dtarg: no but really crawling._

_dtarg: i’m reading a report about abuse in police households and my skin is crawling_

_dtarg: do you know how much goes unreported?_

_missingday: no._

_dtarg: who would they report it to anyway? their abuser’s partners and friends and colleagues? not in this victim blaming world we live in._

_missingday: i hadn’t thought of that. now my skin is crawling._

_dtarg: adding fuel to the fire i see_

_missingday: you’ll bail me out if i ever get arrested at a protest, right?_

_dtarg: obviously_

_-_

Dany stands on the bus—it’s too full for her to sit and she doubts it will get emptier before she reaches Hyde Park. She pulls her phone from her pocket and sees six missed calls from Jon, and a text from Gilly.

She’ll read that after she texts Missandei.

_I’m coming south. I need you. I know you’ve got a lot of school work but I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need it._

She sees Missandei start typing immediately.

 _I’ll have cocoa ready_.

And Dany almost sags in relief.

Next things next, she opens the text from Gilly.

_I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I understand if that means we can’t be friends._

Dany begins typing immediately.

_I’m not mad at you I promise. I am reeling. I’ll talk to you later ok?_

She doesn’t text Jon.

She doesn’t call him back.

She just stares out the window at the snow falling lightly against the city lights as the bus makes its way down State Street.

-

_“My dad,” Gilly swallows, and Dany’s hand tightens on her mug. Gilly doesn’t like to be touched, she’d said so in a therapy session a few weeks ago. Her boyfriend is fine, and her son, but with other people she’s jumpy. So Dany doesn’t touch her. She wants to hold her hand, but they aren’t there yet. They may never be. That’s not important, though. What’s important is that Gilly is swallowing a second time. “I tried to get help. To get out,” she whispers. “But when I reported him they didn’t want to do anything. They didn’t believe me. Not that they thought he was great…I don’t know. This whole city’s corrupt.”_

_“How’d you get out?” Dany asks. Professional Dany is taking over, the one who does this for a living, listening to testimonies of little girls like her._

_“My boyfriend. He…He paid attention. He didn’t think I was lying. He wanted to help. It almost cost him his badge.” Gilly lets out a choked sob. “His partner didn’t want to help. Wouldn’t help._ _I asked.  And he wouldn’t.”_

_Dany feels a surge of white hot fury._

_-_

_Dany started going to therapy in college, when she was old enough to begin processing what had happened to her. It was therapy that taught her that there was no end to therapy, just mechanism after mechanism. It was mechanism after mechanism that taught her that looking back would never be easy, but that friends were better than what she thought she’d deserved as a girl._

_Missandei says that Dany is a dragon because she goes into work every day and faces her triggers in everything she does. If Dany were a dragon, or a queen who rode on dragon back in armor made of mirror steel, there would never be another little girl ever sold into the bed of a much older man ever again._

_-_

Jon calls her again while they’re on Lake Shore Drive. Dany lets it buzz in her hand, looking at the picture of his smiling face on her phone as the bus moves.

He has such a beautiful smile, especially when it reaches his eyes. That was why she’d swiped right to begin with. That smile, and his dog, and the picture of him and his sister that had made her _want_ to trust him because he so obviously wasn’t Viserys.

Her stomach lurches, and she pushes that thought away. She’ll wait for Missandei, who is making her hot cocoa.

-

_dtarg: i told jon about daario_

_missingday: how’d he take it?_

_dtarg: he’s been good. i think he’s very #whiteboy and doesn’t know what to say or how to say it, but he’s trying_

_missingday: that’s good. that’s a start._

_missingday: yeah i bet he doesn’t have the vocabulary for it_

_missingday: like clearly he would on a professional level_

_missingday: but not on a personal one_

_dtarg: exactly_

_missingday: that’s a good warmup tho._

_missingday: for the bigger stuff_

_dtarg: god. yeah. i hope. we’ll see._

_missingday: *hugs*_

_-_

_What matters is coffee after their sessions, and text messages when her boyfriend’s best friend comes over for dinner and Gilly has to be nice to him because it will make her boyfriend sad if she’s not._

_“Fuck that, though,” Dany growls at her as they walk towards the El together._

_“No,” Gilly says at once.  “It’s not like that.  I promise.  He’d take my side.  But…” she swallows and doesn’t continue._

_“But?” Dany asks.  She always asks—not because she wants to be pushy, but because Gilly told her once that she was allowed to be.  “I know it’s because you care,” she had said.  “I know you know.”_

_“But he’s done so much for me.  And I don’t want him to be upset.  Not ever.  His life’s been hard too.  And if it means that I’m nice to Jon for an evening even if he wouldn’t help, that’s what it means.”_

_Dany doesn’t think much of this, and says so.  But Gilly’s got her hands on her hips.  “I would still be there if it weren’t for him,” she says firmly.  “He’s not bad.  Not even a little.  It’s like we were talking about,” she waves her hand, because she doesn’t know when, nor does Dany.  It doesn’t matter.  “They don’t know.  They can’t know.  And he sort of knows, but not enough.  And I don’t need to remind him, because then I’ll remind_ me _.”_

_-_

Missandei buzzes her in and true to her word, there’s hot cocoa with whipped cream in her apartment. One of her roommates waves to Dany, who does her best to smile while Missandei fills up a huge mug and then leads her into her bedroom, shoving some textbooks off her bed so Dany can sit there. But she doesn’t. She sinks to the floor against the dresser and sips the cocoa down and it is warm on her tongue.

It’s the first time she felt warm since before Gilly walked into the restaurant.

Missandei waits, drinking her own cocoa, and Dany takes a deep breath. She swallows. Twice. Like Gilly.

“Jon was the partner who wouldn’t help Gilly escape from her rapist.”

-

_Jon cares about her.  He’s angry, and impatient, and work drives him up a wall, but he always stops and listens to her.  He’s snarky, and distant sometimes with others, but never with her.  He understands her.  And she understands him._

_After their second date, she cried.  Honest to goodness cried.  She didn’t know why.  She just was crying, and Drogon came over and sat on her lap and purred while she sobbed.  When the tears had dried, she’d texted him and asked if he wanted to see the new Star Trek movie that had come out, and he had texted back instantly._

_-_

_Jon cares about her, and it had taken her a while to realize how well they moved as one._

_Jon was abused too, as a kid. “She hated that I existed,” he tells her one night.  They’re half a bottle of wine in, and Dany never drinks because when Dany drinks she looks back, but right now Jon’s looking back, and she’s listening.  “I dunno,” he says, twisting his wine glass between his fingers.  He looks at her.  “Took me a while to find my stride, I suppose.  But she still…” he rubs his palm.  He’d been burned there once.  A barrel of a gun that he’d pushed away from the captain during a crossfire.  It gets tight sometimes, and he has a nervous tick and rubs it.  Dany takes his hand and kisses his palm and Jon’s eyes search hers for a moment._

_She doesn’t tell him about Drogo.  She doesn’t tell him about Viserys.  She doesn’t have to—not just yet.  But right now it’s her, and Jon._

-

Missandei is still as a cat. She’s always been still as a cat, always reserved. It’s part of what makes her poetry so beautiful, Dany has thought in the past. That she is still but her words drip with movement that she doesn’t allow in her body.

“You’re going to have to back up,” Missandei says slowly at last. “I don’t think you’ve told me about Gilly.”

Dany flushes. She has, just not by name. It feels less like she’s telling all of Gilly’s secrets if it’s not by name, even if she knows Missandei will never tell. Missandei is the most subtle person Dany’s ever known.   “My friend,” Dany says. “From the group therapy.”

And it clicks. “Ah.”

And it clicks again. “Ah.”

-

_“There’s got to be something wrong with you,” she jokes.  Jon swings his arm around her shoulder and kisses her temple._

_“There’s plenty wrong with me, you just don’t care,” he says.  She elbows him, though not very hard, and twists around.  The sun’s already down, even though it’s hardly late at all.  Winter comes early here, so much farther north than Texas, and Dany presses her face into Jon’s neck and breathes.  The soap he uses smells like pine and it makes her heart race._

_-_

_The first time she and Jon have sex, it’s unlike anything she’s used to.  The last time she had sex she was sixteen, and it wasn’t that Daario was bad in bed, he just didn’t really ask her what she wanted.  And Jon does.  He asks at every stage—is this ok?_

_He goes down on her for like half an hour, but she’s too self-aware to cum and makes him stop because that has to be tiring, right?  She tries not to remember how tired her jaw felt after oral._

_She tries to keep those memories out as much as she can, but Jon’s just not like Drogo at all, and not like Daario.  He’s everything she wanted from them, and thought she got, but didn’t._

_Afterwards, when he’s asleep next to her, her head tucked against his neck, she slides her fingers down between her legs and rubs herself until she falls asleep._

-

Missandei waits. Missandei always waits when Dany’s head is spinning. She knows that Dany will tell her. Because Dany will. Dany always has.

When she’d first signed up to do one of the mentorship programs that the city had to offer, Dany had never in her wildest dreams imagined she’d get Missandei, a quiet girl with wise eyes who only came to the North Side for a chorus she was part of once a week. She’d expected a little girl to mentor, to help through tough times and maybe guide towards college. Missandei, it had turned out, hadn’t needed Dany’s help with school, but somewhere over the years, the two of them had come to understand one another so intensely. Dany frequently forgot that her friend was so much younger than her, and Missandei rarely did anything to make her remember.

Missandei was the first person besides her therapist Dany had told about Texas, the only person to really understand.

And Missandei waits, because when Dany needs to speak, she’ll say it.

-

 _Dany was thirteen years old when_ it _happened.  She thinks of it as_ it _, rather than what it was.  It’s easier that way.  Besides, if she thinks of it, that means looking back, and if she looks back she’s lost.  So she looks forward.  She checks her email, she gets the board of directors to do what she wants, she goes to one of Missandei’s poetry slams and sits in the front row, she goes to therapy, she goes on dates with guys she matches with on Tinder, she goes to her support group._

_It makes life seem like life should be._

_Dany’s doing what pretty women in their late twenties do.  She survives—a millenial struggling her way through the infrastructure built by boomers is what everyone sees.  They don’t see that niggling voice in the back of her head, the one that sounds so much like Viserys.  They don’t know._

-

_It’s a miracle she matches with Jon.  He’s cute, with a long face and grey eyes.  He’s a dog guy—there are pictures of him walking this enormous white dog on his profile, and he jokes that he “accepts” her three cats because cats.  Ordinarily, insults to her cats would mean that Dany ghosts out of the conversation, but there’s a picture of him with a woman slightly younger than him with the same long face and grey eyes and she’s grinning while she paints his face for Halloween, and there’s a caption that says, “That’s my little sister.  She’s the best,” and Dany feels a lump in her throat and hopes._

-

“God fucking dammit,” Dany says. There have been too many emotions in her heart in the past hour for her to feel any of them truly, but finally anger bubbles forward. “He was supposed to be _good_.”

Missandei doesn’t say anything, and Dany angrily sips her cocoa. It burns her tongue this time, and she hisses.  

“He was supposed to be good,” this time her voice is thick as if she’s about to cry. All she can think of is that picture of him and Arya, but somehow Viserys is there too, standing next to him, in him, she’s not sure. “He’s not supposed to be Viserys.”

“He’s not,” Missandei cuts in. “Not to minimize what he did, of course, but he’s not Viserys. He didn’t sell his sister.”

-

_“You’ll make him happy.” It’s not a question, or an observation, it’s a command. But not a forceful one. The sort of idle command that Dany is used to hearing from Viserys.   She looks at Drogo. He’s tall, and muscular, and his face is hard, and she doesn’t want to she doesn’t want to she doesn’t want to she doesn’t_

_-_

_“He pretends like he didn’t,” Gilly whispers. “Like he helped. But he didn’t. And he knows I know. And I think he blames me for it. For reminding him that he’s not what he thinks he is.”_

_-_

_It’s not easy.  It’s not hard, per se.  Dany’s too used to it to call it hard.  How can something be hard when it’s the same level of not easy you’ve been living with since you were younger than you like to think about?  But it’s not easy._

_It seems less heavy with Jon somehow.  Not that he tries to carry her weight.  He would if she’d let him, she senses it.  But it’s like Gilly says—some weight you’ve got to carry on your own, so Jon doesn’t get to hold that part of her.  Besides, he’s got his own aches and pains to worry about.  But carrying something heavy alongside someone makes it less hard.  Not easier, but less hard._

_-_

“No,” she concedes. “He’s not Viserys.” He’s not Drogo either. He’s not Daario. He’s a completely different beast, Jon. She’s always known that.

It’s that thought, more than anything, that calms her. Or rather makes her go still. She’s too angry to be calm, to upset to be calm. But her mind stops reeling for just a moment and she looks at Missandei, and now it’s her turn to wait.

Missandei leans forward. “Do you hate him or it?”

Dany closes her eyes and a weary smile crosses her face. “That’s the problem,” she says quietly. “I hate it. I hate it so much I could scream. But I don’t…I…” she licks her lips. They’re dry and wind-whipped and they sting from the salt of her saliva.

-

_“Can I ask you something? Either as a person or in your professional opinion?”_

_Dany looks up from her book and raises her eyebrows. Jon’s on his computer and Rhaegel is sitting on his lap, purring loudly as Jon pets him, and Dany was at ease until the moment she heard his tone._

_“What’s up?”_

_“My little sister,” he begins. “Arya—she’s started dating this guy. And he’s my age. Is that creepy?”_

_“Is he a bad guy?”_

_“I don’t think so. As far as I can tell he seems nice enough.”_

_“But your cop instinct isn’t going bananas?”_

_“Nah.”_

_“Then no, it’s not creepy. Your sister is in her twenties and is old enough to know what she wants.”_

_Jon nods and Dany turns back to her book._

_“Am I going too far worrying?”_

_“Do you think you are?”_

_“I love her, so no. But…I don’t know…”_

_“Do you think she’s yours?” Dany asks without looking up from the page._

_“No.” He sounds perplexed at the question._

_“So it’s protectiveness, not possessiveness?”_

_“I think so.”_

_“Then I’m lead to believe it’s natural, but your sister can still make her own choices.”_

_-_

_“I don’t want—”_

_“It doesn’t matter what you want. It matters what_ I _want. You’re mine to give away, remember?”_

-

_“I wasn’t really close to my sisters,” Gilly tells the room. “Or my mother. I think…I think I blamed them for it, somehow? Even though it wasn’t their fault. But my mother didn’t protect me and she was supposed to. She was supposed to.” There are tears in her eyes and her hand drifts to her throat to clutch the knot that’s filling her voice. “No one picked me—not ever. Not till my boyfriend. He was the first that did.”_

_-_

“But that’s the problem,” Dany bursts out hotly. “I love him, but if I stay with him, I’m picking him over my friend and the damage he did isn’t something he can ever repair. And if I leave him I’m...”

-

_“She wanted me to be less than nothing in her house.” Easiness covers the bitter anger in his voice, as if he’s daring her to take pity. So she doesn’t. She knows that feeling all too well. Pity hurts worse than anything sometimes._

_-_

“And I love him, I don’t want to hurt him. I mean,” she adds quickly. “I want to throw him out a window and scream at him and shake him, but hurt him? Hurt his heart?”

“I think you’re forgetting something,” Missandei says carefully.

“What?”

“Yourself. Why do you have to pick his side or hers? Why can’t you pick your own?”

“You sound like my therapist,” Dany mumbled, feeling like a little girl. She did not like feeling like a little girl when she was one.

“Good,” Missandei shrugged. “I take it that means that I’m hitting home then.”

Dany stared at her then grimaced.

“It was a trigger reaction,” she says, her voice sounding more even than it should.

“What happened, exactly?”

“It was Sam’s birthday—or rather it is on Friday, but since everyone’s supposed to be going away for Thanksgiving…” Dany groans.

-

_Jon’s promoted to detective three weeks before Thanksgiving, and Dany couldn’t be prouder._

_“It’s like the gods wanted you to have the perfect Thanksgiving,” Dany grins as she helps him unbutton his pants.  “New girlfriend, recognition at work.  They’re fortifying you.  Nothing can bring you down.”_

_“She won’t say a damn thing about it,” he shrugs.  “But I don’t care.”_

_“You better not,” Dany grins, and she kisses him and they stumble towards her bed and shove Rhaegel off it because he’s far too in the way._

_-_

_Jon squeezes her and asks, “Thanksgiving?  You don’t have anywhere to go, right?”_

_“I usually curl up in sweats and pretend that it’s a regular day,” she replies easily._

_“Come with me?  To my family’s?”_

_“Will she be there?” Dany asks._

_Jon jerks a nod._

_Dany kisses him, and his lips are hungry against hers, needy._

Mine’s dead, _she thinks for a moment before she pulls away._ Unmourned.  I loved him once.

_Once, when she’d been a little girl.  Once when there’d been sunlight and something else and before he’d grown so very mean._

_Before_ it.

-

_“I can do short spurts,” Jon whispers. “Like, birthdays, holidays, the like. It’s even better now that I’m out of the house and stuff. Like I’m my own person, she’s not responsible for me anymore, but still. I regress a lot. Like a lot. And I don’t like that. And I hate that she does that to me.”_

_“Why does she get that control?” Dany asks. It’s a question her therapist had asked her when she’d talked about Viserys once._

_“She doesn’t,” Jon says at once. “But I don’t either. Not when I’m home.”_

_-_

“I was supposed to go home with him for Thanksgiving,” she says. “We’re leaving tomorrow. That’s why we were having dinner to begin with. Fuck.”

“We’ll cross that bridge in a bit,” Missandei says. “You were at dinner.”

“Yeah, and Gilly just shows up, and I put two and two together. Like her baby’s named Sam—after Sam—and she’d let slip once that Jon’s name was Jon and…and it just all clicked and I’m sitting across from this girl I know from my group support and I know exactly why she hates Jon because how can I not know and it’s _Jon._ ” It hurts. It’s like her heart’s on fire, and not in the good way. There had been a good way with Jon, once. But not tonight.

She stares down at her mug of cocoa, miserable.

“So you just got up and left?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t say anything?”

Dany shakes her head. “I texted Gilly from the bus. That was it. Fight or flight, and I flew.” She took a deep breath. Breathing was always important.

-

_It hurt it hurt it hurt and she wanted to cry but if she cried he wouldn’t be happy and then Viserys wouldn’t be happy._

_She wanted to die._

_Anything was better than this._

_Anything._

-

_“You do amazing work,” Jon says, and there’s true admiration in his eyes._

_“Thank you,” Dany replies. She does do good work. She tries to, and she sometimes even manages and every day is a war and she’s winning it._

_He doesn’t need to say more. She isn’t sure she wants him to. She’s worried it’ll ruin the moment. But it doesn’t._

_“You’re so unbelievably strong you know. I get blown away by it a little bit.”_

_And Dany feels it._

-

“I don’t like flying from him,” she whispered.

“Well I don’t think a shouting match in a restaurant would have been a good birthday present for Sam,” Missandei says dryly. “Or good for you. Or Gilly.”

“I know,” Dany sighs. The road is clear for her now. She can see it more clearly than she’s been able to see anything all evening.

She pulls out her phone and sends Gilly another text. _I need to talk to Jon. I don’t know what comes next, but I hope that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends still. I don’t want you to think I’m choosing him. I don’t even know that I am. I think I’m choosing me and I don’t want that to be at your expense._

She then opens the running chain she’s had with Jon for months now. The last thing he sent her was a _getting off the train_ from right before dinner. _Where are you now?_ she asks him.

Her phone buzzes twice.

_Home._

_Where’d you go?_

She doesn’t reply to that question.

_I’m going to come over. I’m probably going to shout a lot. Just as a warning._

_I may too._

Dany almost types _I fucking dare you_ but she doesn’t. Instead she goes back to Gilly’s text.

_It’s not at my expense. I trust you. And let me know how it goes?_

_Of course._

She looks up at Missandei.

“Thanks,” she whispers.

“What for?” her friend asks.

“For knowing about it, and for helping.”

Missandei climbs off the bed and sits down on the ground next to Dany, squeezing her shoulders tightly.

“All right I’m going to go…go see Jon.”   And she hails herself an Uber.

* * *

Dany gets out of the car and presses the buzzer for Jon’s apartment.

He buzzes her in immediately, and she climbs up the stairs slowly. She’s still wearing her heels from work, and she hadn’t realized how tired her feet were until just this moment. She hadn’t intended to stand on the six for however many minutes it took her to get down to Missandei.

She pauses on the landing of the second floor to take them off. The carpet is a bit groty, but she doesn’t care.

Dany reaches the third floor and the door is on the latch so she pushes it open and steps inside. She shrugs out of her coat and hangs it on the hook by the door. Ghost’s claws scrabble against the hardwood as he comes through the apartment to find her. She pets his head, his fur is soft, and he licks her wrist.

Dany finds Jon sitting on his couch. There’s a bottle of beer on the end table next to him, and he has his computer on his lap. He doesn’t look up as she comes in, he just keeps typing, and Dany sits on the arm of a chair, perches like a bird, perches like a dragon, waiting for him to look up.

She thinks idly as she waits that she’s never fought with Jon before. Argued, yes, but fought? They don’t fight. They both like to dig their teeth into an argument so much that arguing has never led to an outright fight because there’s some odd joy that comes in the debate. She breathes as deeply as she can, and waits.

Ghost climbs onto the chair she’s perched on and she rubs her hair through his fur.

Jon finishes typing and looks up at her, and he looks angry. _Let it out,_ she thinks. _Go on. Get yours out of the way._

“What the fuck?” he asks her, his voice calm. “What the fuck was that?”

“That was me being wholly unable to handle a situation,” she replies honestly.

“What—dinner with Sam and Gilly? Do you know how much you freaked her out? Sam says she was really looking forward to meeting you.”

That’s what does it. “Don’t pretend that Gilly is the reason you’re angry,” Dany says evenly.

It ruffles Jon’s feathers. “Pretend? She was almost in tears. Do you not fucking care about that?”

“Yeah. I do. Which is why I texted her to tell her what was going on.”

Jon blinks, and Dany watches the dots connect more slowly than usual. He’s been drinking. _Not drunk enough to be stupid, though,_ she thinks. “How did you get her number?”

“I met her six months ago at a group therapy session and we’ve been having coffee once a week for the last five months.” Jon’s face goes slack as he processes her words, but Dany’s done waiting. “Do you want to tell me why you left her with her rapist? Or is that something I should just guess at. Because I can promise you, the reasons that I’m coming up with right now are pretty delightful, and are doing a number on what I think of you as a police officer.”

Jon doesn’t say a word. He’s pale, she notes. His cheeks are flushed from the beer, but apart from that the blood seems to have left his face as he stares at her, still thinking about her words.

“Because here’s where I spent the last few hours,” she continues, since he’s clearly not going to. “I spent the last few hours numb, because my good guy boyfriend wouldn’t save someone from her rapist and still makes her feel like she’s to blame for his not saving her from her rapist. My good guy boyfriend is everything I loathe on this earth. My good guy boyfriend gets to think he did a good thing because she made it out in the end and his partner has a better moral compass than he does.”

Jon reaches for his bottle of beer and downs the rest of it. “So that’s it, then? That’s us done?” He sounds angry, he sounds hurt.

“It depends,” Dany says.

“On what?” His voice sounds almost dead.

“On what you have to say for yourself.”

He gets up from the couch and leaves the room. She hears the sound of him opening the fridge and he comes back with another bottle of beer. Dany grabs it from his hands as he passes her and he glares.

“Come the fuck on,” he growls.

“Don’t you dare get angry at me,” she hisses at him. “Don’t you dare.”

“What do you want me to say?” Jon demands. “I can’t do anything about it. It’s done now. It’s over. That’s it. She got out and I didn’t help her because I’m a coward. Because I’m a servant of the patriarchy. There. You happy?”

She’s not. Not really, and she closes her eyes for a moment. She tries to think of…well, anything. She remembers him holding her, of him kissing her forehead, of the excitement in his eyes as he told her stories of his family and how wistfully she’d imagined meeting them and having some taste of familial warmth that had been robbed her as a girl. And when she opens her eyes again, most of her rage is gone. Only that existential rage is there, that voice that Viserys left in her mind and when she looks at Jon, even that goes quiet.

Something about her expression calms him, it seems. He searches her eyes quickly, and he says, more slowly, “I would do it differently if I could. You know that, right? I’d go back and do everything differently.”

“That’s helpful for Gilly,” Dany says, and it’s somehow more devastating without her fury fueling her words. “She doesn’t get to think you’re good. You’re not. You can never be, no matter how hard you try. You would have left her with her rapist.”

And his shoulders sag. Legitimately sag, and for half a heartbeat, Dany feels relief. _He knows,_ she thinks. _He can’t bear to face it, but he knows._

“What can I do?” he whispers, and Dany shrugs.

“I don’t know. Live with it. Know what you did and never ever do it again. And it wouldn’t hurt to do everything you can from Gilly such as she feels comfortable.” Jon nods. “Bearing in mind she may not want that. She may never want you near her—or her son—ever.”

He closes his eyes and he looks pained, and he leans back against the couch, tilting his head to look at the ceiling. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Yeah.”

They sit in silence for a moment. Ghost shifts in his chair and exposes his belly to Dany, silently begging her to pet him.

“Was she a case you were working?” Jon asks.

“Hm?”

“You said you met her at a therapy session. Was she a case you were working?”

And there it was. The question that only had one answer. She could lie. So easily. He’d believe her too. _But then he won’t know why it hurts, just why it’s wrong._

“I was sold into sex slavery by my older brother when I was thirteen,” Dany says and Jon’s head snaps up in shock. “I gave birth to a stillborn boy when I was fourteen, and the man I was sold to died shortly thereafter and I escaped by stealing his motorcycle and riding for nine hours through Texas.” She remembers the thrum of it between her legs, remembers the wind whipping her face, tears stinging in her eyes because she didn’t have sunglasses, fear that if she looked back she’d see them riding behind her, ready to catch her.

She doesn’t look away from him. She watches everything process across his face. Every single thing he knows about her work, and his own, about her body and his, about her heart and mind. He can’t look away, and Dany doesn’t want him to. She watches his reaction because she needs to, she needs to see his face contort with sadness, with horror, with love and he gets up and walks towards her and it’s only as he pulls her to her feet and she presses her face to his chest that she realizes she’s trembling, sobbing. He holds her so tightly, and she clutches him too.

How long they stand there, she’s not sure. Long enough for her to notice how quiet the room has gotten, for her to feel his heartbeat slow against hers, for her to feel her breath normalize.

“That was the trouble,” Dany hears herself say at last. “I hated it, but not you. I hated that you did it, that you were in any way part of it, because…because…” she can’t bring herself to say it and she looks up and he’s looking down at her carefully.

His arms tighten around her as she breathes, and she feels safe there. He’s not locking her in place, not letting her go. He’s holding her up.

That’s why he’s Jon, and not Viserys, or Drogo. That’s why he’s harder, that’s why she can’t cut him out completely even though every ounce of her morality tells her that she should never look at him again. “And there won’t be a day I don’t hate that you did this,” she says. “I will literally never forgive you. But I still love you and I don’t know how to reconcile those two things without hurting myself. And I’m tired of hurting.”

“I won’t ever hurt you,” Jon promises.

“You already have,” Dany says firmly. “Don’t you ever forget it, or pretend that you didn’t.”

“Then I will be better for you,” he whispers, but that doesn’t fit either.

“Be better because it’s the right thing to be,” Dany says, “And if you have to be better for someone, be better for Gilly.”

Jon doesn’t nod. He doesn’t say anything, and for a moment they just stand there in each other’s arms, breathing.

“So you’re not breaking up with me,” he says at last, and Dany shakes her head.

“Not today, anyway,” she says, trying to smile, but it doesn’t reach her eyes, and Jon doesn’t find it funny. She sighs, and reaches up to cup his cheek.

He closes his eyes and turns into her palm, kissing it.

“You know now,” she breathes, and Jon shakes his head.

“I know nothing,” he says seriously, and his lips quirk as though there’s something about his words she doesn’t understand. “But I’ll learn. I promise I will.”

 


End file.
